Literary Modernism

973 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: essay about modernism in literature

The term “modern” makes people think of words like bold and captivating. Literary modernism is just that. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, poets and writers steered away from the traditional styles of literature and moved towards expressing the true sensibilities of their time. Some writers that followed this trend are Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T.S. Eliot. The techniques that these outstanding literary buffs used were rejection of traditional themes, subjects, and forms; bold experimentation in style and form reflecting fragmentation of society; sense of disillusionment and loss of faith in the American Dream; rejection of sentimentality; rejection of the ideal hero and instead using the flawed hero; interest in the workings of the human mind; and revolt against the spiritual debasement of the modern world. Many early authors, like the ones mentioned above, used these techniques to contribute to a unique American voice.
In T.S. Eliot’s Poem, The Waste Land, modernism is strewn across every page. In the time period it was composed, The Waste Land was a very unique poem that displayed many modern characteristics. Here, the concept behind modernism was to show the rejection away from society. Eliot was living during the period where the traditional norms of the 1800’s were cast aside and writers wrote more realistic and how life really was. The poem breaks traditional form by not having customary stanzas and lines; not to mention the random spurts of foreign language. Unlike the typical poems of its time, it did not use excessive imagery to paint a picture or rhyming. Eliot sought out a new type of poetry that used individual fragments to create a sense of desolation that he thought the world was suffering...

... middle of paper ...

... which the novel takes place is one of moral debauchery. Whether their money is inherited or earned, those who live in the society in “The Great Gatsby” are morally corrupt. They are living life in pursuit of cheap pleasures and with seemingly no moral purpose. Any person who endeavors to move up through the social order becomes corrupt in the process. Fitzgerald’s unique American voice is developed through scrutinizing the American Dream.
Each of these poets or writers contributed to the great period of literary modernism. The use of this modernism contributed to each man’s unique American voice. The Waste Land, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”, and “The Great Gatsby” are undoubtedly some of the utmost pieces of literature to exemplify this unique voice. Without the contributions of writings like these, the literary world would be much different today.

Show More
Related

  • Sympathy For Myrtle's Death In The Great Gatsby

    686 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Gatsby displays how the time of the 1920s brought people to believe that wealth and material goods were the most important things in life, and that separation of the social classes was a necessary need. Fitzgerald’s choice to expose the 1920s for the corrupt time that it really was is what makes him one of the greatest authors of his time, and has people still reading one of his greatest novels, The Great Gatsby, decades

    Read More

  • Summer of Wealth, Dreams and Desires in The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    736 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Great Gatsby a, novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, follows a cast of characters abiding in the town of East and West Egg on affluent Long Island in the summer of 1922. Each of the characters, while part of the same story line, have different priorities and agendas, each character working towards achieving what they think would benefit them the most. As The Great Gatsby’s plot thickens the characters constantly show their discontent of the American Dream that they are living, always expressing their greed for more, three particular offenders of this deadly sin are Tom, Daisy and Gatsby himself. The characters motives stem from a mixture of boredom, a need and longing for the american dream, and simple selfish human desire.

    Read More

  • The Great Gatsby: Money, Power, and the Fulfillment of Dreams

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Great Gatsby written by F. Scott Fitzgerald money, power, and the fulfillment of dreams is what the story’s about. On the surface the story is about love but underneath it is about the decay of society’s morals and how the American dream is a fantasy, only money and power matter. Money, power, and dreams relate to each other by way of three of the characters in the book, Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom. Gatsby is the dreamer, Daisy cares about money, and Tom desires and needs power. People who have no money dream of money. People who have money want to be powerful. People who have power have money to back them up. Fitzgerald writes this book with disgust towards the collapse of the American society. Also the purposeless existences that many people lived, when they should have been fulfilling their potential. American people lacked all important factors to make life worthwhile.

    Read More

  • F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby

    655 Words  | 2 Pages

    During Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, it is apparent to be an absurd time for the wealthy. The shallowness of money, riches, and a place in a higher social class were probably the most important components in most lives at that period of time. This is expressed clearly by Fitzgerald, especially through his characters, which include Myrtle Wilson, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and of course, Jay Gatsby. This novel was obviously written to criticize and condemn the ethics of the rich.

    Read More

  • Modernism at Its Finest in Literature

    770 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...s strived to create pieces of literature and art that challenged American traditions and tried to reinvent it, used new ways of communication, such as the telephone and cinema, to demonstrate the new modern social norms, and express the pain and suffering of the First World War, during the American modernism period of literature. Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen shed a new light into the African-American social groups and a new age of art, music, and literature was formed. Poets, like Pound and Elliot, shaped American poetry to fit the outlandish ruin in the First World War and the Great Depression. In novels, like The Great Gatsby, the American dream of success and hope was shattered through the stock market collapse and the Great Depression. Through all these attributes, American literature changed significantly into a literary period called modernism today.

    Read More

  • Corruption of the American Dream in the Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

    1440 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald employs the use of characters, themes, and symbolism to convey the idea of the American Dream and its corruption through the aspects of wealth, family, and status. In regards to wealth and success, Fitzgerald makes clear the growing corruption of the American Dream by using Gatsby himself as a symbol for the corrupted dream throughout the text. In addition, when portraying the family the characters in Great Gatsby are used to expose the corruption growing in the family system present in the novel. Finally, the American longing for status as a citizen is gravely overshot when Gatsby surrounds his life with walls of lies in order to fulfill his desires for an impure dream. F. Scot. Fitzgerald, through his use of symbols, characters, and theme, displays for the reader a tale that provides a commentary on the American dream and more importantly on its corruption.

    Read More

  • Free Essays - The Great Gatsby

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    As Matthew J. Bruccoli noted: “An essential aspect of the American-ness and the historicity of The Great Gatsby is that it is about money. The Land of Opportunity promised the chance for financial success.” (p. xi) The Great Gatsby is indeed about money, but it also explores its aftermath of greed. Fitzgerald detailed the corruption, deceit and illegality of life that soon pursued “the dream”. However, Fitzgerald entitles the reader to the freedom to decide whether or not the dream was ever free of corruption.

    Read More

  • Modernism

    3194 Words  | 7 Pages

    One attribute of Modernist writing is Experimentation. This called for using new techniques and disregarding the old. Previous writing was often even considered "stereotyped and inadequate" (Holcombe and Torres). Modern writers thrived on originality and honesty to themselves and their tenets. They wrote of things that had never been advanced before and their subjects were far from those of the past eras. It could be observed that the Modernist writing completely contradicted its predecessors. The past was rejected with vigor and...

    Read More

  • Elements of Post-Modernism in Literature

    2033 Words  | 5 Pages

    Post modernism is a very difficult concept to define. A French philosopher once defined post modernism as an "incredulity toward all meta narratives," which basically means a skeptical attitude toward all claims of absolute truth. Post modern writers use elements and techniques that provoke the reader to question their reading experience and scrutinize their own personal understanding of life and the values of their society. There are excellent examples of post modern writers using elements of post modern writing, such as irony, magic realism and fragmentation in the short stories read in Ms. Reynolds's English 4U class. The use of post modern elements in these short stories forces the reader to further their reading experience by going more in depth into the writing and figuring out how the story is significant to them and their view on the world.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Society And Class In The Great Gatsby

    1192 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, The Great Gatsby reveals the carelessness and shallowness of the characters in the upper class. Society is totally corrupted and the character’s lives revolve around the money and extravagant lifestyles. All of the characters are surrounded with expensive and unnecessary itms, which in turn, dulls their dream of actual success. Scott F. Fitzgerald provides a powerful and everlasting message of a corrupt, materialistic society and the effects that it has on the idea of the American dream.

    Read More

  • Moral Corruption In The Great Gatsby

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald explores the idea of the American Dream as well as the portrayal of social classes. Fitzgerald carefully sets up his novel into distinct social groups but, in the end, each group has its own problems to contend with, leaving a powerful reminder of what a precarious place the world really is. By creating two distinct social classes ‘old money’ and ‘new money’, Fitzgerald sends strong messages about the elitism underlying and moral corruption society. The idea of the American dream is the ideal that opportunity is available to any American, allowing their highest aspirations and goals to be achieved. In the case of The Great Gatsby it centres on the attainment of wealth and status to reach certain positions in life,

    Read More

  • A Light in the Darkness: Modernist Writing

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald capture the essence of the modernist period, and both approach different aspects of the same genre. The goal of the modernist writer was to create an enjoyable piece of literature, while confronting issues that had never before been raised in the literary world to date. The Modernist hoped to wipe away the images of perfection in the imaginary realties of the literary past and create a clean slate filled with the reality of the modernist period. The Modernist authors will always be remembered for their exploration of language and form, and for their dedication to keeping us in a well lit place, in an otherwise deceiving reality.

    Read More

  • The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot

    872 Words  | 2 Pages

    This poem is considered to be “one of the most difficult poems in a difficult literary period”. The Wasteland is a poem that is said to be one of his most influential works. At first glance, critics considered the poem to be too modern, but then opinions changed as they realized the poem reflected Eliot’s disillusionment with the moral decay of World War I in Europe. T. S. Eliot in The Wasteland combines theme, style, and symbolism to explore life and death. The Wasteland was written in 1922 and is a long poem divided into five sections.

    Read More

  • T.S. Eliot’s Powerful Use of Fragmentation in The Waste Land

    2713 Words  | 6 Pages

    T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is an elaborate and mysterious montage of lines from other works, fleeting observations, conversations, scenery, and even languages. Though this approach seems to render the poem needlessly oblique, this style allows the poem to achieve multi-layered significance impossible in a more straightforward poetic style. Eliot’s use of fragmentation in The Waste Land operates on three levels: first, to parallel the broken society and relationships the poem portrays; second, to deconstruct the reader’s familiar context, creating an individualized sense of disconnection; and third, to challenge the reader to seek meaning in mere fragments, in this enigmatic poem as well as in a fractious world.

    Read More

  • Modernism in T.s. Eliots's the Wasteland

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    Modernism in T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" Modernism has been defined as a rejection of traditional 19th-century norms, whereby artists, architects, poets and thinkers either altered or abandoned earlier conventions in an attempt to re-envision a society in flux. In literature this included a progression from objectivist optimism to cynical relativism expressed through fragmented free verse containing complex, and often contradictory, allusions, multiple points of view and other poetic devices that broke from the forms in Victorian and Romantic writing, as can be seen in T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" (Levanson). The varied perspectives or lack of a central, continuous speaker uproots "The Waste Land" from previous forms of poetry; however, it is not simply for the sake of being avant-garde, but to espouse the modernist philosophy, which posits the absence of an Absolute and requires the interpretation of juxtaposed, irreconcilable points of view in order to find meaning. The first stanza illustrates this point. Within the first seven lines, the reader is presented with a "normal" poem that conforms to an ordered rhyme and meter.

    Read More

More about Literary Modernism

Open Document